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Latest Releases from the field - August 2018

Friday, August 10, 2018

Check out the latest releases from around the nonprofit sector featuring items from the Center for Effective Philanthropy, Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy, Funders for LGBTQ Issues, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, Media Impact Funders, PEAK Grantmaking and IUPUI Women's Philanthropy Institute at Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.

Culture Resource GuideGrantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO)
After more than 15 years promoting grantmaker practices that support nonprofit results, GEO is convinced that a strong culture inside foundations is critical for effective philanthropy. It’s virtually impossible to operate as an ally and partner to nonprofits if you are working inside a foundation whose values and culture run counter to that spirit. As part of GEO’s ongoing work on culture, we’ve conducted interviews with grantmakers from around the country and – while everyone’s culture journey is different – there are some common phases of culture work that most organizations go through. GEO has broken the work of shaping culture into four primary phases - understand, assess, shift and tend.

Dissonance & Disconnects: How Entry and Mid-Level Foundation Staff See Their Futures, Their Institutions, and Their FieldEmerging Practitioners in Philanthropy (EPIP)
The study lends depth and data to emerging leaders’ often-challenging experiences in the field -- experiences that are also often not well understood. It examines the thoughts and feelings of early- and mid- career practitioners on philanthropy and their futures in it. The report focuses on themes including participants’ experiences at work, the alignment between their institutions’ practices and their values and how participants see their futures in the sector. It is meant to support conversation among emerging leaders and senior executives about foundation practices and how they can better unlock talent up and down the org chart while also bringing foundations into deeper alignment with their values.

Funding Journalism, Finding Innovation: Success Stories and Ideas for Creative, Sustainable PartnershipsMedia Impact Funders & Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy
As the field of journalism continues to grapple with limited resources and dwindling revenues, it’s clear that financial support is needed now more than ever. Philanthropy, in response to the radically changing landscape, is stepping up to revive quality journalism and reconfigure the news media ecosystem. And, in fact, funding for nonprofit news media has seen a notable uptick in philanthropic support, oftentimes in the form of new types of grants.

GUTC Infographic: Foundation Funding for U.S. Trans CommunitiesFunders for LGBTQ Issues
Produced as a part of its Grantmakers United for Trans Communities (GUTC) Initiative, this infographic highlights the needs of the more than 1 million trans people in the United States and notes the current scale and scope of funding for trans issues. Transgender Americans face alarmingly high rates of poverty and homelessness, struggle with considerable health disparities, and constantly confront ill-informed stigma. While funding for transgender communities in the United States has increased four-fold in the last five years, as of 2016, it still totals less than $17 million a year. As a result for every $100 awarded by US foundations, only 3 cents benefits trans communities.

Insight, Impact, and Equity – Collecting Demographic DataPEAK Grantmaking
For philanthropy to advance equity in all communities, especially low-income communities and communities of color, it needs to be able to understand the demographics of the organizations being funded (and declined), the people being served and the communities impacted. That data should be used to assess practices and drive decision making. With the help of Kelly Brown, former Executive Director of the D5 Coalition, and an advisory committee of grantmakers, we have completed an expansive survey, interviews with grantmakers and field research on four key questions: what demographic data are grantmakers collecting and why?; how are they collecting these demographic data?; how is demographic data being used and interpreted? and how can funders use demographic data to inform their work?

Nonprofit Diversity Efforts: Current Practices and the Role of FoundationsThe Center for Effective Philanthropy
In discussions about diversity at foundations, it’s essential that the perspectives of grantees be included in the conversation. That’s why CEP turned to its Grantee Voice Panel of nonprofit leaders to learn more about how nonprofits are thinking about diversity — and how foundations can be most helpful to their grantees, if at all, when it comes to this topic. The data in this report can inform foundation leaders and staff as they consider how they can most helpfully engage with their grantees on the topic of diversity.

How Women & Men Give Around RetirementIUPUI Women's Philanthropy Institute at Lilly Family School of Philanthropy
With an unprecedented number of people retiring in the United States today, it is important for the philanthropic sector to understand how retirement affects charitable giving. This study is the first known scholarly research to explore this question—and to do so through a gender lens at a time when women have more wealth than ever before.